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The 60-year-old Graham Nash is primarily famous for his groundbreaking work as a songwriter and musician, but he is also fiercely political and highly motivated to make this world a better place. Whether it is his work with No Nukes and Musicians United for Safe Energy, or his politically charged lyrics in songs like “Military Madness" and “Chicago," Nash has been tirelessly working to persuade others to follow a more conscientious approach to life for the last 40 years.
This past August, Nash and his bandmates in Crosby, Stills & Nash were invited to Denver to perform at a special Etown concert during the Democratic National Convention, and he was kind enough to grant an interview as the date approached.
“When they asked us to play, I asked David and Stephen, and David and Stephen said they had other plans and that they couldn't go," he said. “I said, 'Well okay, I'm going alone then,' and David's response was 'Oh well, uh, well, maybe I'll come with you.'"
Though Stills didn't change his mind and join his friends on the Etown stage, Crosby and Nash performed as a duo and their participation was a highlight of an evening that played out in front of a “seething den of Democrats" at Denver's Buell Theatre, just blocks from the site of the convention.
Crosby and Nash opened their brief set with the classic CSN&Y number “Dej Vu" as a clear nod to the times we are in. The song's repetitive refrain of “we have all been here before" rings true as the election draws near and America grapples with whom to put in power. From there, the duo went into a pair of protest songs that were very well received. The first, a new Nash song called “In Your Name," is a powerful anti-war ballad that he describes as “a prayer. I'm talking to God asking, 'What the fuck is going on here? What is all this killing in your name?'" The second was “In Our Country," penned by Joel Raphael, and Nash said during our conversation, “It's a beautiful, beautiful song about how we have to take our country back and stop playing this silly game."
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As much as they seemed to enjoy themselves during the event it was clear from statements made throughout the evening that the gravity of the times we are in and the decision that is facing us was not lost on anyone in attendance, least of all on Nash himself, who is a true believer in the power of music to bring people together. “Part of why I like Etown is that they use music and entertainment for social and environmental good," he said.
This is an idea that Nash has embraced for much of his life dating back to 1968. “The last show I did with my band, The Hollies, was a Save the Children benefit, so I've been at this for quite a while," he said.
It wasn't until several years after he began his foray into political activism that he decided to take a more active role in the American political process. It was the '70s, the Vietnam War was raging and Nash had left The Hollies, formed Crosby, Stills & Nash and moved to Los Angeles, where he became more involved in the anti-war movement. During that time Nash wrote several protest songs including “Military Madness" and sadly, in many ways the words ring as true today as they did more than 30 years ago.
And after the wars are over
And the body count is finally filed
I hope that The Man discovers
What's driving the people wild
Military madness is killing your country
So much sadness, between you and me
War, War, War, War, War, War
As he became more and more of an activist and wanted to speak freely about his beliefs on a larger scale, Nash began to feel a civic responsibility to the country that he was calling home. Having been born in England he decided to become an American citizen and in August of 1978 Nash succeeded. “I didn't want to feel hypocritical," he said. “I didn't want to praise this country or be critical of this country without being a part of this country. I also wanted to vote."
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Nash said that for 23 years he felt great about the decision and was very proud to be an American citizen, but around the year 2000 things took a turn for the worse in his eyes.
“Being a citizen meant a great deal to me in the early days, and it meant a great deal to me up until about seven years ago," he revealed. “Obviously, when the Bush administration came in and trampled all over the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and put the country in a complete state of fear in an attempt to control emotions and votes it's been an atrocity and I have not felt good about it. I think George Bush will be considered the worst president we have ever had in our entire history."
In a brazen move that echoes this sentiment, Nash's part-time bandmate Neil Young released a scathing criticism of the Bush administration in the form of his Living With War album in 2006. Shortly after the album dropped he approached Crosby, Stills & Nash about doing a CSN&Y tour to promote the album and raise awareness about what they felt was wrong with the country, and more specifically, our President. The album even went as far as to call for the impeachment of George W. Bush.
Let's impeach the President for lying
And misleading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door
While the album and the tour were a critical and financial success they were also met with a huge amount of controversy and upset some people to the point where there were several death threats against the band while they were on the road in the summer of 2006.
“I was never on a tour with bomb sniffing dogs before," Nash said. “I was never on a tour where we had death threats and it happened enough times where I was a little apprehensive. I was out there doing what I am supposed to do, which is to make music and to a certain degree entertain people, but to a large degree make them think. As an American citizen I have the right to speak my mind. I don't know if we'll get retaliated against or if we are on any lists but I don't care personally. Well, I guess I do care but not enough to stop me from speaking my mind. What can you do? I'm not going to bow down to the fear of what might happen to me."
It is this kind of motivation and activism that is changing our country little by little and making people more aware of the political and social landscape that affects them on a day-to-day basis.
Continue reading for more on Graham Nash...
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“I think that Neil Young did a brilliant, brilliant job of opening up more doors for discussion of a very tender subject. I think we are having a small effect," said Nash. “The momentum of this planet is such that it takes an awful lot to move it even a small degree but we've got to start somewhere."
Nash has chosen several places to start and one of them is helping to change the leadership paradigm that the country has been under for the last eight years. His involvement at the DNC shows that he is hopeful about the future of this country and sees Obama as the candidate to support. “I donated to his campaign a year and a half ago or more," said Nash. “I believe that he has a great heart. I believe that he is enormously sensible and I think he has the right spirit and will be a breath of fresh air and hope."
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However, Nash is still in touch with the realities of our political system and understands that, despite the best intentions, Obama is not perfect. “I feel very hopeful for this man but he is a politician. He has to make deals he has to compromise simply to get the job that he wants," observed Nash. “I believe that once he gets that job, and I am very hopeful that he does, that he'll be the most sensible choice."
Nash went on to cite the enormous turnout of more than 100,000 people in Berlin for Obama's speech there in July as a sign the rest of the world is pulling for change in the United States. It only takes a couple of minutes on www.sorryeverybody.com to see how regular people around the world reacted when Bush was re-elected in 2004, and this is our time to redeem ourselves. As Nash said, “I know that he is going to improve America's image in the rest of the world, which is going to go a long way to make us feel better about ourselves and not worse."
Many people in this country share the feeling that a main focus of the Bush administration has been to simply terrify Americans into believing that the government has an intimate place in the everyday life and happenings of the citizen's of this country. From detention without charges for any “terror suspects" to the domestic call monitoring program, the administration has managed to convince people that somehow these kinds of programs will protect us as citizens despite sacrificing basic civil rights protected by the constitution. In an effort to explain this kind of psychological manipulation Nash referred to a posting by Ariana Huffington on her blog, The Huffington Post.
“I learned something from Ariana Huffington that is very important to me," he said. “She said in her blog one week, 'I can't believe that with what they've done with the Constitution and the Pfizer Bill and everything else that the George W. Bush administration is still there.' She got an answer from a friend of hers, who I think is the head of Psychiatry at Harvard, and he said, 'Here's what's going on, Ariana. In the brain there is a tiny organ that is about the size of a peanut. It's called the amygdala and that is responsible for the fight or flight response. It's an ancient organ and it's an ancient emotion. When the amygdala is engaged all other concepts are diminished and all the person needs is a glass of warm milk and their jammys. The Bush administration has been brilliant at triggering the amygdala in the minds of many many Americans through fear and controlling them.' I thought that was a fascinating piece of information."
From the Huffington Post Article:
“Deep in the brain lies the amygdala, an almond-sized region that generates fear. When this fear state is activated, the amygdala springs into action. Before you are even consciously aware that you are afraid, your lizard brain responds by clicking into survival mode. No time to assess the situation, no time to look at the facts, just fight, flight or freeze. Fear paralyzes our reasoning and literally makes it impossible to think straight. Instead, we search for emotional, nonverbal cues from others that will make us feel safe and secure."
Read the whole article here.
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Though fear is a natural and primal human emotion critical to our survival as a species, it is not a comfortable feeling and should not be a tool used in a functioning democracy in an effort to retain and expand power. In fact, it seems more like a tool used by a schoolyard bully, a dictator or other oppressive regimes that is afraid to be open to the thoughts and ideas of others. It's a frightening abuse of power and it gets even scarier when the concept of detaining and confining dissenters starts to rear its ugly head. While he was passionate throughout the conversation, Nash really got fired up when he began to relate information about the construction of internment camps around the country
“There was a secret meeting of congress in May of this year called COG Meeting [Continuance of Government Meeting]," he said. In that meeting they came up with the statement that they thought the economy would be so bad at the end of 2008 that people would start to revolt," said Nash. “They had already identified people that may cause trouble, that may be ringleaders, and they have already built the internment camps to put them in. The latest one that is being built just outside of Fort Worth is for 300,000 people and there is fucking video on YouTube to prove it!"
Here we are nearing the end of 2008 and at least part of that speculation has come true. With banks failing around the world, the credit market frozen and the stock market continuing its radical up and down swings, the economy is in one of the worst situations it has been in since The Great Depression. It's simply mind-boggling that the government could have known this was coming and not done more to prevent it or minimize the impact rather than formulate a strategy to incarcerate the people who expressed their displeasure with the situation. While there has been no mass uprising, and thankfully there are measures being put in place to correct our economic situation, it took nearly cataclysmic events to prompt a public reaction from the administration.
Nash broke it down to the basics when he told me, “I'd like to not live in fear. Why should we live in fear? Isn't life difficult enough?"
A simple enough sentiment, it's clear, to the point and beyond any doubt, true.
We can change the world
Rearrange the world
It's dying - to get better.
-Graham Nash - “Chicago"
